AI killed the joy of coding

Yeah. So, I've been seeing a lot of

YouTube videos kind of pop up of people,

developers talking about their

experience with AI and how the current

state of things is just not that

enjoyable and people are actually kind

of stressed out about it. I'm going to

go through a couple of videos and then

also just give my opinions on the

current state of AI in this industry

because I do think it has changed a lot

and I have my own opinions on like is

this even enjoyable anymore? Like is

this a fun career to do where you're

just basically prompting Claude Code all

day or you're prompting Codeex to have

it do all the work for you and review

the work. I'm not going to wash through

these and do reactions. I'm just going

to kind of give a quick like overview.

This guy basically took a break, a

sbatical for like a month from his job

because he just felt like he was just

spending so much time multitasking and

context switching by managing all these

agents trying to implement the code and

have another agent basically do code

reviews and another one do dependency

updates. And I think his main point was

like, okay, like the way that we used to

code where you actually like go heads

down and like try to figure out a hard

bug and solve it. It's been distilled to

like prompting Cloud Code to basically

do it for you and then like you're

waiting for Claude Code to finish and in

the meantime you have to find other

things to kick off to fill in that void

of space which I'll put all these videos

in the description below if you guys

want to check them out. But I I think

I'm seeing a lot of these like this is

uh Maximillion. I also watch him as

well. He's a really good creator. He

makes a ton of tutorials. his his title

is it was more fun before AI and I think

a lot of people are also kind of feeling

this way like if you've been in the

industry for a while which I have been

in since 2013 professionally which is

what almost 13 years now it was a lot

more enjoyable before AI for me like

there was a period where I was actually

excited about this like we could move

much faster we could be more productive

but now the AI and the models have

gotten so good that it just feels like

you're just prompting and you're not

doing any work yourself you're just

reviewing the code that the AI generates

and to not use the AI is also silly too

because like I've seen the performance

benefits and gains uh the efficiency of

using these tools to write code like

even at work it's a project that's like

600,000 lines of code or more and I had

to do a huge refactoring which would

probably have taken me like weeks to do

by hand and I just prompted cloud code

did a did a giant plan and 250 files it

changed them all it refactored

everything all the tests pass and you

know I had to come through and review

the code and do some additional changes

and reprompt and it did miss some stuff.

But we're in an age now where like you

can basically completely change your

codebase from one prompt and you could

just sip co coffee as you like watch the

uh the agents kind of go through and

after you do all this you there's no

sense of like reward before like you

would spend all this time trying to

learn how these algorithms work, how to

write code and now it's just like you

prompting your way to a solution. And I

guess there there used to be a dopamine

hit that you get by doing this, which I

just don't feel anymore. Like on all my

side projects, I don't feel like I'm

actually making them because AI is just

basically coding it all for me. And I I

get more joy going out and mowing the

lawn. Like I feel more accomplishment

doing something that's actually

physical, like mowing the lawn or I

don't know, cleaning up something like,

you know what I mean? Compared to like

just prompting an agent to kind of do

the work. Okay. This is another one.

This guy's basically talking about how

he felt like he, you know, AI's

basically made him useless because it

can basically do everything that he used

to do at his job. Okay, this guy got a

bunch of views on his, like 166,000

views. This guy Garrett Ross, uh, he's

basically talking about how challenging

it is to get into this industry right

now. Like, he got laid off after working

for a while and he's been trying to find

a job for like nine months and the

interview process is terrible. Uh, some

interviews are asking you to use AI.

Others are asking you not to use AI.

They're going to ask you like to do a

leak code problem, which if you take a

zoom out a little bit and think about

it, cla can solve most of these problems

that you're like doing in an interview.

So like why are we being asked how to do

leak code questions that are kind of

silly, right? Like fsbuzz, all these

other things. like yeah they do test

your knowledge in coding but the the

industry is changing and I think it's

going to take a while for you know

coders to actually start realizing like

what's actually important because

knowing how to do some of this

implementation detail is honestly just

kind of become commoditized that it's

not really important anymore. I mean

this guy even blew a blood vessel in his

eye he's so stressed trying to find a

job. Cody codes another one worst job

market in 26 years. Yeah. So what are my

opinions on what's kind of going on? I'm

going to play a little bit of Runescape

as I kind of talk because I found this

is actually pretty cathartic. I used to

play this game back when I was a kid,

like in like when I was nine years old

or 10 years old. And uh I picked it back

up recently. It's been kind of fun just

kind of uh mindlessly clicking on things

and watching my character level up,

right? I get more accomplishment

watching a virtual character level up

than I do prompting Claude Code to add

features to my codebase. Uh that's the

unfortunate truth. So, let's talk about

my opinions on like where where the

current state of things are. I mean, I

do have a course which I talk about how

to use agentic coding and how to use

these tools. So, I do think that it is

super important to learn how to use

these tools, but unfortunately, I think

when you've been in the industry for so

long and you're so used to doing things

a certain way, when AI first started

coming out, like I was super excited

about it. I'm like, "Oh, this is really

cool. I can move a lot faster. I can

implement stuff. I could probably work

on many different side projects at the

same time." But recently, I think at the

end of the last year, like I just kind

of reached a breaking point where I'm

like, "This is no longer fun." like it's

no longer fun to prompt uh these agents

to do all the work for me. Like I'm not

feeling a sense of accomplishment

anymore like I used to. I will say that

if you're like new coming into the

industry, I'm guessing that you don't

feel this way because now you have like

this tool that can help you be a lot

more productive and efficient that you

didn't even know like how to code

beforehand, but now you can actually

ship features. But me, I've been doing

this for 13 years and I'm like looking

at it from a different angle where the

sense of reward that I used to get from

coding is gone. Like I used to spend a

lot of time trying to become really good

at typing. Like my words per minute was

like 150. I was actually training that

to become really good at coding fast. I

got really good at using my IDE, opening

files, diving in the codebase,

refactoring stuff. Um, I got really good

at understanding code and, you know, web

development at least. I'm not like a

super awesome coder, but I spent a ton

of time like learning all these

different frameworks and languages and

libraries and how to become really